In what the Social Justice Left might describe as “intersectionality” at work, Whoopi Goldberg took Black Lives Matter activist DeRay Mckesson to the woodshed on Wednesday over his since-deleted tweets claiming that the new Planet of the Apes film was “racist.”
As just about every site online who’s tired of Mckesson’s self-promotional form of “activism” reported this week, the anti-“whiteness” activist took to Twitter on Monday to condemn Hollywood for supposedly “rendering black people as apes.” How did he reach that conclusion? One of the apes in a promotional image for War for the Planet of the Apes was wearing a blue vest. Mckesson also wears a blue vest, so it’s clearly a reference to him…
“Given the history of rendering black people as apes, I’m offended & appalled by the lack of consciousness in Hollywood,” he posted, adding, “In associating black people w/ apes, active work is being done to perpetuate the dehumanization of black ppl in mass media. #PlanetOfTheApes.” (screenshot below)
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But as Whoopi pointed out Wednesday on The View, Mckesson was (yet again) too self-focused and too quick to pull the race card. The activist’s whole supposed “controversy,” she said, was “insane.”
“Prominent Black Lives Matter activist DeRay Mckesson accused filmmakers of personally mocking him by dressing up an ape in a blue vest, which he’s been known to wear,” she said among mixed reactions from the audience.
“DeRay, you need to go back and watch the 1968 original and check out what the apes were wearing,” she said amid claps and cheers as images showing the bad apes wearing dark blue vests appeared on the screen.
“This has nothing to do with you,” she said. “This was a movie that was about what happens when mankind doesn’t pay attention to environment, to how we treat animals and each other. That’s what the movie was about.”
“Get over yourself,” she concluded among laughs and applause.
One of the other hosts tried to save face for Mckesson, praising him for all his supposed good work as an activist, but still admitted she was “confused” by exactly what point he was trying to make.
Video below via GossipCop:
Mckesson responded to Whoopi on Twitter, writing “if you have something to say, I’m here,” and then launching into a half-baked defense of his racial claim:
“Now, with the #PlanetOfTheApes poster & toy, I was contacted by folks within Hollywood who thought there was an issue, hence those tweets,” he wrote. “After speaking with even more people about the history of the film, I deleted the tweets.”
As HotAir‘s John Sexton notes, this is not the first bogus racial conspiracy theory Mckesson has pushed. Mediaite covers some of the “unrepentent conspiracy-monger’s” previous claims here.
Mckesson was not the only activist to see racism in the film’s harmless promotional image: Tariq Nasheed tweeted, “Does the new Planet of the Apes poster have racially coded messages? Notice the #BlackLivesMatter symbolism. Notice the ape with the blue vest.”